PSA: Status effects are based on the initial hit! In more than just one way!

I wish I had initially known this, so I am going to explain for anyone looking around.
There’s a few properties of status effects that revolve around the initial hit that triggered the effect; both for the purposes of magic effects and for general damage.

  1. DOT effects are based on the damage of the attack used. This might seem like a no brainer, but it’s important to state that they are based on the FIRST hit rather than being refreshed with additional hits. This means multihitting imbuements or beams are significantly less useful when using DOT magics. The values are mentioned below, on the next point

  2. DOT effects have wild durations that can drastically alter your playstyle.
    Scorched (plasma) has a 3 second duration. Worth noting that it still does more damage total than the 5 second bleed, and why it’s so prominent with mage.

Bleed, Burning, and Scald are 5 second durations. They do 25% and 35% of the initial damage respectively. Scald is the water imbued thermofist counterpart to burning, and statistically identical.

Corroding (acid) and Melting (magma) both are 10 second durations with 50% damage. This is around the point where you are going to want to charge for big hits. Ultimately, you maintain more reliable DPS this way.

Poison lasts 20 seconds (15 after the next patch) and inflicts 100% of the attack’s damage dealt. This causes poison’s viability to vary wildly and revolve around the initial first attack damage. Makes poison absolutely amazing for ambush attacks with high damage weapons, like Kai’s saber flash or Musket’s charged shot.

This all matters because of point #3
3. Non-stackable effects cannot be refreshed or reapplied
This comes from experience as a poison conjuror: once an initial hit of a debuff is applied, you lose the ability to reapply said debuff or change the amount of damage it does with a strong hit until it wears off on the target. As far as I can tell, this applies to all magics. The only stackable effects seem to be blinds, so there’s no point in making a crazy multihit build with these magics.

You’re better off focusing your effort into higher damage builds, or builds utilizing defensive properties or intensity to further your power. Size is also a good one (as of writing) since it gives you better leniency to hit these big attacks.

And… that’s all you need to know! This definitely could explain some damage inconsistencies or lower DPS for players making use of Scimitars, Stormbow, Slient Blades, Greatsword, or Flintlocks - use this knowledge wisely!

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Does this apply to the poison tooth dagger too? Am I dealing 500 damage in a single throw with this thing

Does this apply to the poison tooth dagger too? Am I dealing 500 damage in a single throw with this thing?

Yeah, so probably.